The Most Creative Storytellers for Startups

DonationTo: The Joy of Receiving

Everyone likes to make money. It’s why we go to work. Many have taken to the internet to make a living. When it comes to making money online, there are many options. These include advertising, selling products, selling services, and forwarding those emails to your friends to secure a portion of a lost Arabian sultan’s fortune. Although the results from email forwarding may be suspect, the other tried and true methods work. Given a little bit of business and technical savvy you can begin to generate income from your online efforts.

There’s another age old method for making money that’s worked throughout the ages. Ask for it. As a coworker of mine once commented in regards to salary negotiations, you won’t get what you don’t ask for. This is most certainly true in business transactions. The question remains though, will people respond to your request for money and impart it to you? To this, results may vary, but the aforementioned pearls of wisdom stand. By given them the opportunity to give, you have now opened the door to the possibility that they will.

The next question becomes, how best to open such a door? One method is to simply stick a PayPal donation button on your site. This is whence the term begware was born, which now defines an entire category of software. Oftentimes when asking for money it’s helpful to provide more information about the cause. Or to let them know in a formal way that you value their effort. In this spirit DonationTo was founded. It’s a new site that lets anyone create a donation page from which they can begin reaching out to supporters and accepting donations for their cause. It is an ideal solution for political fundraising, churches, schools, or even marathon runners. One recent example is DonationTo was used to help raise support for Pilar Kuhn (singer) and Duke Guillaume (Saxophone & Band Leader). These two artists are using the funds raised to create an album, (more details here).

DonationTo is easy to use. First you register, then you configure a donation page, indicate and confirm your PayPal address, and voilà, you can start accepting donations. The donation page is given a custom URL at your choosing, and also a title and description. From there you can upload a logo and background image to personalize your donation page with a beautiful and modern look, example here. Optionally, you can establish a donation goal with a target date. Whether you set up a target fundraising goal or not, the running tally of donations is displayed right on the page. This is actually my favorite part. It gives people an opportunity to feel involved. Rather than arbitrarily transferring funds that will somehow filter over to your bank account, they can see exactly how much they helped.

(Note, the above video references the ability to receive your earnings by check. All donations are now sent solely by Paypal.)

We would be remiss to review such as site without giving it a test run. For this, we created our very own SlapStart donation page (since removed…). We have to warn you, the effects of clicking on that link may compel you to mindlessly part with piles of cash. Deeds to houses, Corvettes, or just about anything other than a cardboard box, can be transferred separately.

As you watch the deluge of donations come in you may notice that 5% is taken off the top (not counting PayPal fees). This is the nominal service fee for such an influx of funding. Let’s say your DonationTo page is so enticing that you begin receiving large amounts of money. The 5% fee will begin to add up. In this situation you can upgrade to the monthly plan, which is just $7/month to process all the donations you like. So when you start to get in the $100-$150 range you’ll save money by upgrading. In some cases you’ll want to retain 100% of the money donated, so you’ll start out with that plan.

Fundraising can be a challenging and daunting event. DonationTo makes the fundraising process simple, creative and fun. DonationTo helps you create a beautiful modern donation page that can easily be shared with anyone in the world to help bring awareness to any cause.